What is Domain Authority?

Domain Authority. It’s an essential part of both digital PR and digital marketing.

But what exactly does that ever so slightly cryptic term refer to? And does a higher score actually equal a better result?

In this blog post, we’ll be exploring each of those questions. Defining exactly what the term is, and isn’t, and providing solutions to help you level up your digital marketing and PR strategy.

What does Domain Authority mean?

Domain Authority (DA) is:

– A metric used to assess the importance and relevance of a website, within its subject area. The scores range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating a more relevant backlink profile.
– A PR professional’s worst nightmare.

Why Domain Authority Matters

Essentially, the term ‘Domain Authority’ refers to a search engine ranking score, and was originally developed as a way of predicting how likely a website will rank in search engine result pages. Gaining authority is central to a website’s credibility, and plays an important role in how high up that website might rank within a list of search results.

There are several factors that impact the overall score. These include the total number of links present on the given site, and the number of root domains elsewhere linking to the given site.

For website owners, it’s a handy indication of how their site compares to that of competitors.

For PR professionals, it’s a way to identify and categorise your key media outlets for outreach.

How is Domain Authority calculated?

So we know that Domain Authority is a pretty important part of gaining high quality traffic. But how exactly is it calculated?

A range of factors are influential to the DA score. Primarily, these consist of the quality and quantity of inbound links, but factors such as website age, the relevance of content on the site and general user friendliness are also taken into account.

Different tracking tools weigh these factors differently, and scores can vary depending on the tracker used.

What is a good Domain Authority score?

DA scores typically range from 0 to 100, with some occasional variance across different platforms and trackers.

Generally, higher scores do indicate a stronger website, with better chances of attaining a higher ranking, whilst lower scores indicate a weaker authority and credibility.

However, there are a number of contributing factors that feed into these scores. Lower scores also indicate a domain with fewer backlinks, for instance, and may reflect how remote a website is.

That means that those sites with significantly low scores are far less likely to drive any high quality traffic, and – for any PR peeps out there – that achieving that piece of coverage on such a site is unlikely to have a real impact.

But how low is low, and what is a good domain authority?

For major DA tools, such as Moz, a score of 20 or less represents a low score. Websites around that range are less likely to attract important organic traffic, and will struggle to rank for any more competitive keywords.

Scores between 40 and 50 are generally considered average, with any scores about the 50 mark considered as good or even excellent.

How to check your Domain Authority?

To check Domain Authority, there are a number of tools you can use. Some top (free!) examples include go-to sites, such as AHRefs and Moz.

Simply add in the desired website’s URL to the online checker and voilà. The total DA score should be sat right in front of you.

And that result isn’t necessarily fixed. To monitor progress, or allow for any necessary adjustments that might need to be added to your site, it’s important to regularly check in on a given DA score.

How to improve your Domain Authority?

Okay, so let’s say you’ve done the checks, and the results… could do with a little work.

Time to fight your inner perfectionist. DA is an ever changing metric, one that’s influenced by a number of different factors. That means that, luckily, there are a number of actionable tips and strategies commonly used to boost that end result.

1. On-Page SEO Optimisation: Building a Strong Foundation

One technique is to boost on-page SEO, by using a concise, but descriptive, approach. In practice, that means using descriptive content, well-placed images, all carefully blended with a solid mix of both short and long-form keywords.

2. Backlink Acquisition: Earning Trustworthy Citations

For website owners, earning authoritative backlinks is another important boosting technique, and key to enhancing your site’s credibility. There are a number of ways authoritative backlinks can be obtained, with perhaps the most common approach being guest posting.

3. Guest Posting for Industry Authority

Guest posting refers to the act of writing and publishing an article on a different site. Ideally, this would fit within a similar subject area or niche, and would work to build your company or brand reputation as a reliable, authoritative source.

4. Link Building Strategies for Sustainable Growth

Other techniques website owners can benefit from using include link exchanges, acting as an information source for reporters, or working to find and replace any broken links.

5. PR Efforts for High-impact Coverage

On the PR side, aiming for a consistently high DA score for earned coverage is a good way to improve results. That means focusing outreach on websites and media outlets that are known for their reliability and accuracy.

One way to assess the progress of your earned coverage is to find an average score across all pieces of coverage. Take this example of our work with Generation Logistics. A consistently high DA average, across over 100 pieces of coverage, fed directly into high levels of site traffic, boosting both brand image and search ranking.

As DA is an ever-changing metric, a consistent and long-term approach is required to create real change. Remember to keep checking in, too, as the impact of these actions, and your site’s overall progress, can be tracked through ongoing score analysis.

Cultivating Long-Term Success: The Journey to a High Domain Authority

Achieving and maintaining a quality Domain Authority score is important for measuring both coverage and website growth, but attaining a quality score can take time.

Should a score not be quite what you were hoping for, take time to work through techniques that help increase DA that may be relevant to your site. Doing so will not only help to build trust, but also amplify and improve your overall online presence.

We support businesses and brands of all sizes to achieve their online goals. For more info on how we can tailor a strategy to your specific industry and target audience, reach out today.